US Copyright Office wants to know which forms of DRM should be allowed to be cracked

A few days ago a notice of inquiry was issued by the US Copyright Office to determine what exemptions there should be from the prohibition against circumventing of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. US copyright law requires this to happen every 3 years, last time exemptions were granted for amongst others ebooks that have text-to-speech disabled and cellphones that disallow installing software.

So if you're American and think it should be allowed to crack the DRM on ebooks, now's the time to tell the government, just be sure to argue without resorting to catchphrases like "information wants to be free" or arguments that are not based on non-infringing use like "I already have the paper book, I deserve a free copy of the ebook."

Personally I think you should be allowed to crack it on any "purchased" works. DRM makes some sense with rentals, but otherwise all it does is restrict what legitimate consumers can do with something they legitimately paid for. It certainly doesn't hinder pirates.

Personally I think you should be allowed to crack it on any "purchased" works. DRM makes some sense with rentals, but otherwise all it does is restrict what legitimate consumers can do with something they legitimately paid for. It certainly doesn't hinder pirates.

DRM will only start making sense for rentals once it stops being used for legally owned content (purchased or free).

It totally makes sense to have restrictive terms on essentially loaned items. But in addition to all the other problems with DRM, the fact that it's used on content people supposedly own means stripping technology is probably far more ubiquitous than it might otherwise be. If owned content were DRM-free (or stripping programs were provided mainstream) and rentals had a unique DRM protocol, I doubt the demand to crack it would be anywhere near as high. Rental companies would probably save a lot of money on having to buy replacement copies.

As it stands, in addition to punishing honest consumers, DRM also hurts rental businesses.

And I was all ready with my nice letter, only to find that it's not open to submission yet! Ah well. It's in the can, at least.